Pope Benedict XVI looks at a giant chocolate Easter egg following his general audience April 4.

Easter
is the high point of our liturgical year, as the resurrection is the
pinnacle of our Christian identity. Yet it’s the most difficult feast to
understand. Unlike Christmas, which brings the Son of God to a human
level we can begin to comprehend, Easter raises us to our ultimate
destiny. And the resurrection changed not only the lives of a few
people, but the nature of human reality itself. Death was no longer the
end of all existence.

It’s no wonder, then, that the secular
world has given us images we can hang our Easter bonnets on. But when
the chocolate rabbits are long gone and we’re tired of eating
hard-boiled eggs, as a faith community we’re just beginning to unpack
the mystery of the resurrection. As with any life-changing event,
understanding doesn’t come instantly.

A hollow chocolate bunny
may be the best symbol we can have for this glorious feast of Easter. At
the heart of the resurrection narrative in all the Gospels is the empty
tomb. Each of the disciples must face that emptiness and discover what
it means. Our own journey of faith must start in the same place.

Some
of the lasting images of Easter and the resurrection take something we
can’t know at all from our own experience and put it into the context of
our daily lives: an encounter with a beloved friend, a simple evening
meal, a shepherd and his sheep.